Chernobylite 2: Exclusion Zone

My first hours with Chernobylite 2: Exclusion Zone felt like watching someone build a house while you're already living in it. The bones are genuinely interesting: a dimension-hopping Planewalker named Cole Grey, a Zone that reacts to your faction choices, six distinct classes ranging from the brute Eliminator to the arcane Chernomancer, and a base-building loop that asks you to assign recruited companions to workbenches based on their individual skill sets. That last system, expanded meaningfully from the original game, is the most quietly satisfying part of the whole package. Scrounging for scrap and radioactive materials to upgrade your crafting stations gives every scavenging run a tangible purpose. The trouble is that Chernobylite 2 arrived in Early Access carrying a different kind of radioactive weight: a "Mixed" Steam rating driven by a community that feels the sequel moved in the wrong direction. Where the original leaned into claustrophobic horror and a slower, more deliberate pace, this sequel opens the world up dramatically - the Zone is reportedly around twenty times larger - and leans into a faster, loot-driven combat loop mixing melee, firearms, and what the game calls Essence abilities. For players who loved the first game's mood and mystery, that pivot stings. For players coming in fresh who want a scrappy Eurojank action-RPG somewhere between first-person Fallout and ELEX, there is a lot here worth exploring. There are real problems to acknowledge honestly. Performance issues were severe at launch and remained a friction point for many players months in. The AI-generated voices mixed into NPC dialogue alongside recorded lines create jarring tonal breaks that puncture immersion at exactly the wrong moments. The open world, while massive, has been criticized for feeling sparse and underpopulated in its current state. Cole Grey himself lands as an underwhelming protagonist - a character several reviewers found difficult to care about, which hurts in a game where your choices are supposed to ripple through the world. The Planewalking mechanic, which promises seamless build-swapping and dimensional traversal, is a compelling idea that feels undercooked at this stage. What keeps this interesting as a project is The Farm 51's track record: they shepherded the original Chernobylite through Early Access and delivered a genuinely improved 1.0 release. The current build represents only thirty to forty percent of the intended final scope, with the full story, expanded world size, and remaining quests still incoming. The dev team has been active in listening to community feedback, and the ambition underneath the rough surface is not hard to see. Three factions to negotiate with, a companion system with real mechanical teeth, switchable first- and third-person perspectives, and a narrative about dimensional collapse and survival all point toward something that could cohere properly given time. Right now, Chernobylite 2: Exclusion Zone is a game for patient players who like watching a promising RPG grow. If you need polish and a complete story, the 1.0 release is the smarter wait. If you can sit with uneven voicework, occasional performance bumps, and a protagonist you might not love, the Zone has a strange, unsettled pull to it that is hard to entirely dismiss.

Kai · Scout Team

Indie & narrative

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